The Unrelenting Climb in COVID-19 Cases

 

I have been visiting each state's COVID-19 reporting site cases and tracking the weekly changes since early May. It is hard to wrap my mind around the numbers now being reported. 

One-thousand new cases per million population per week used to be my benchmark for a state performing poorly. This past week 44 states had more than 1000. For the past week ending November 7th, the median spot (26th place out of 51, Connecticut) had 2171 new cases per million. 

The previous peak in the summer, during the week ending July 18th, had a median of 767 cases per million. Back then, only eight states had more than the current median of 2171. 

This past week all but two states reported an increase in cases: Georgia and South Dakota. South Dakota, with a mind-boggling 9134 new cases per million over the past week, dropped by one-half of per cent concurrently dropped their testing by 8.5%. Their positivity rate rose to 54% suggesting that they are missing a lot of cases. Georgia increased their testing by 10% and still had a drop (way to go Georgia). 

Outside of Georgia, everywhere else is bad news. Those states that have been performing well such as Vermont and New Hampshire are still doing better than the rest of the nation, but there numbers are doubling and tripling. Vermont had 39 new cases statewide five weeks ago. This past week it had 168 (today, the 12th of November, they have had 116). (In contrast, North Dakota with about 20% more population than Vermont had 9262 cases this past week.)

In the next couple of days, two states will pass the one million cases mark: California and Texas. As of the end of Wednesday, November 11, California had reported 984,682 total cases with 7424 new cases on Wednesday, while Texas had 985,380 cases with 10,865 new cases. (Note: different sources provide different numbers. These come from the state's websites and are used for The COVID-Tracking Project.)

North and South Dakota continue to take number one and two spots on the highest number of new cases per million population during this past week. This dominance began for the week ending September 5th. Before the August Sturgis motorcycle rally, the most COVID deaths North Dakota experienced in one week was 11. This past week it was 108. 

Their positivity rates are over 50%, suggesting that a lot of cases are going undetected. With 12,153 new cases per million population in North Dakota, this represents a rate of more than 1% of their population being infected each six days. 

Here is each state graphed as to the number of new cases per million population for this past week. 

On a less painful note, I would like to point out what are in my opinion the best design and the worst design among state reporting sites. 

Below is the banner from the website with my favorite presentation from the Utah Department of Health. The colors are pleasant, the numbers are clear and easy to read, the information is what is most important. Many sites will try to hide the most important numbers behind the supposedly good news, like how many people have recovered or how many tested negative. The date, equally as important as the figures, is simple to find. 

At the other extreme, shown below is a screen-grab of the Mississippi Department of Health's COVID reporting site. Beyond its lengthiness and lack of prioritizing information, you will find a maze of numbers and figures, sometimes repeating and sometimes presenting for different days at the same report.